As he saith
also in Osee, I will call them my people, which were
not my people;

and
her beloved, which was not beloved.Romans 9:25

by Steve Santini

2001

Jaroslav
Siefert, one of the Nobel Prize winning poets, has said that if you want to
know truth look to the heretics. Jesus Christ said that his words are truth.
Jesus, himself, by most at the time was considered the worst of heretics and
even today in secrets of some hearts he is considered the same and worthy of
his humiliating death. Paul, in his time, was, and to this day, is considered
by many as a chief heretic. He, too, was personally silenced by execution.
Marcion, a labeled second century heretic whose actions insured that the
Pauline letters would be preserved, was also silenced in a differing and more
enduring way.

When we look for truth along the bloody
trail of the heretics what they said needs to be harmonized with the words
about and from the chief heretic, Jesus Christ. In of itself, being labeled a
heretic does not guarantee the truth of the entire message or even any part of
it. If the message of the heretic does harmonize with scripture then we have
truth. Martin Luther was considered a heretic by the then established church
because he proclaimed that justification came by faith rather than works. It
became evident from scripture that his words on the subject, in the end, were
true. It was fortunate that he was given the time to develop his message and
the means to make it known to a large number of hearers; otherwise, he and
his message, as others were, could have been swept under the rug of personal
destruction so that we all could still be paying the church to justify our
dead family members.

When we look to the heretics we have two
problems. First, we have the tactics used to destroy what is considered
heretical. The initial response to a heretic is silence so that a response
does not draw the attention of others. If the apparent heresy persists the
heretic is punished by character assassination or public humiliation so that
others tremble at the thought of adopting the heresy. Finally, if possible
the means of the state are used to silence the heresy as it was with the
Arian controversy of the fourth century. The heretic’s words are adulterated
to obscure the so-called heresy and to convict him. Tertullian, who was an educated
Roman attorney, used his skill to convict someone by selectively using
Marcion’s words to counter his so-called heresy. Like Tertullian’s writings
against Marcion, many times what we have existent today of the heretics words
were written by those who detested them. It has been said that whether a
leader is determined to be good or bad is based on who writes the history
books. In the case of Marcion, since all of his own writings and writings in
support of him were destroyed, we have only had one side of the story. The
second problem we have is that in places the words of the original scripture
have been altered purposefully to eliminate what the Orthodox Church
considered as heresy and its possible resurgence. This chapter concerns what
I believe is one of the most detrimental alterations of this kind from the
texts.

To expose this alteration we ask from our
understandings of the nature of man what could have been the scenario that
precipitated this probable internment of truth. We search among the accumulated
historical debris of some considered church fathers for their silence or
fragmented relics of truth amongst their criticisms. We also search the words
of some who were people of conscience who left us a record of the possible
alternatives to what they were to record for acceptance within the Orthodox
Church. Next we look to the minute detail of the text itself and then to the
scope of all scripture to synthesize our understandings of truth. Finally, we
consider, that if this is true, what are the implications for faith today.

For this study we have begun by focusing
on the heretic, Marcion, who was noted disparagingly as a facilitator of the
so-called Gnostic heresy. What gem or gems of truth can we sift from the
historical remnants of the Gnostics’ beliefs through the detail of the texts
and the scope of scripture to find this pertinent heresy? According to Elaine
Pagels’ enlightening book, The Gnostic Gospels, one of the established
church’s primary fears of and primary accusations of the Gnostics was that
they were attracting large numbers of women and having women minister in
contrast to the Orthodox Church. Was there a basis in ancient scripture for
the fundamental belief in the value of women in their churches or was this a
“throw back” to the more proximate pagan prophetesses and goddesses in Greek
religion? From a variety of sources in their writings it is apparent that
they believed that the Holy Spirit was the feminine spouse of God the Father.
As one moves on, I believe that one will see that they had justification from
a basis in scripture for this belief.

G. Zuntz, the noted higher critic, from
his lifetime of examining the oldest Greek texts and textual fragments from
the third century forward, writes that there was no attempt in the West to
maintain the integrity of the original texts until Jerome produced the Latin
Vulgate at the request of the papacy in the fourth century. Zuntz, by using
the standard practice of textual comparison, in his detailed analysis of the
oldest Pauline manuscript, notes, in his book, The Text of the
Epistles, numerous places where the text has been altered. Jerome,
himself, in letters to his colleagues, bewails the fact that he has so many
variant texts to select from for the compilation of a standardized version.
At one point before him he has the old Hieronymian text and its revision. He
says, “The differences throughout are clear and striking.” In his writings he
does leave us a clue to the subject at hand. At one point he has before him
the Gospel to the Hebrews written in Aramaic used by the Syrian
Christians which, as some now say, was the forerunner to the gospel of
Matthew and predated the four canonical gospels. In it, Jerome says that the
Holy Spirit is expressed in the feminine gender and is considered the mother
in law of the soul. (Library 11, commentary in Isaiah, chapter 11: Library 2,
commentary. In Micah 7.6) So here is some additional external evidence from
an unrelated source that the Holy Spirit was originally considered feminine.

Where then do we go for direct textual
evidence that the Holy Spirit was, in the origins of Christianity, considered
feminine? We go to the existing Greek minuscules copied in the early part of
the last millennium to find only circumstantial evidence. Likewise, as we go to
the earlier copied Greek uncials, the Byzantine copies, the eastern Syriac Peshitta,
and the Old Latin we find some peripheral corroboration. Then when we go to
the earlier copied Old Syriac that predates the Peshitta we find a
pearl of great price. It is in the most ancient of the rare Old Syriac copies from the 2nd or 3rd century,
written in the Palestinian Aramaic, the then common language of Israel. It was named the Siniatic Palimpsest. It was found by Mrs.
Agnes Lewis
in the Covenant of St. Catherine in the Sinia. It was then transcribed by Syriac Professor R.L. Bensly of Cambridge
University in 1892. The words of Jesus in John 14:26 reads:

But She -the Spirit - the Paraclete whom
He-will-send to you- my Father - in my name - She will teach you every-thing;
She will remind you of that which I have told you.

On the other hand, current texts of this
verse read: But the Comforter (the Paraclete), which is the
Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all
things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto
you.

Why? The answer may lay in the early
centuries after Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire.
From the fourth through the sixth centuries after Christ, the earlierWestern
Greek texts were first standardized under Constantine from various earler texts that no longer exist and then, over time, translated into other languages.

In a
corresponding manner, later during the same time period, the Old
Syriac, or ancient Aramaic, texts were revised resulting in the Peshitta.
Initially, there was resistance, sometimes riotous, to this revised Eastern Aramaic text, however,
over time the Peshitta became the standard and the older texts fell
into disuse and were eventually destroyed or discarded. After this transitory period, the Old Syriac
text of the four gospels found by Mrs. Lewis was written over with a history of early female church martyrs.
Fortunately, with the help of reagents the original underlying ancient Aramaic texts of the
gospels were recovered.

Even though the revisions and standardizations, there are
numerous reasonable signposts in the overall dynamics of present scripture,
history and life itself that point towards the Holy Spirit as the feminine
familial member of the Godhead.

For examples, in Ephesians 3:15, the apostle Paul wrote of the family of God in heaven and on earth. In normal reasoning and according to definition, the word “family” fundamentally means a mother, a father and a child or children. And in Romans 9:25, Paul wrote that God’s people were to be “her” beloved. Although the context does not identify “her”, an acknowledgment of feminine divinity’s presence throughout scripture does.

In both the Hebrew and Aramaic language
the word spirit is in the feminine gender but in the Greek language it
is neuter. It is the Greek neuter word, pnuema, that was employed by
the ancient Septuagint translators of the Hebrew Old Testament when they
translated the feminine ruach into Greek. The authors who wrote in
Greek were limited in expressing the Holy Spirit in the feminine by the
constraints of the language. (However, the powers, that then were, could have introduced the Greek feminine, e pnume, to compensate for the lack of a
Greek feminine word for spirit.) In addition, signposts directing one to the
feminine nature of the Holy Spirit may have been removed or altered. Bart
Ehrman, writes in his book, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, that
from his comparative analysis, the Orthodox Church altered the texts to
counter various beliefs considered heresies, especially during the time of
Marcion, when they were compiling their own canon of the four gospels. It was
the early gospel of John that was a favorite of the Gnostics and considered
heretical by the Orthodox Church according to textual critic Walter Bauer. (Orthodoxy
& Heresy in Earliest Christianity, Chapter 9)What if to sustain their
developing male hierarchy and to contain the growth of the Marcionite and
Gnostic churches and their attractiveness to women, the orthodox revisionists
altered additional signposts to this feminine aspect of the Holy Spirit and
emphasized their modified canon to counter Marcion’s canon of Luke and the
Pauline letters and the Gnostics beliefs? When we add the evidence in the
scope of scripture and the historical evidence of conflict between the
Orthodox Church and the Gnostics, I believe one can consider this
likely.

(It is also interesting to note in the
context of early church history that the Gnostics’ writings rarely refer to
the orthodox canon of the four gospels and over time refer less and less to
it. Could it have been that they were aware of the revisions concerning the
feminine gender of the Holy Spirit and had no desire to give credence to the
altered canon used by the Orthodox Church to stifle them? This, I believe,
eventually worked to their detriment, because it seems that groups of
Gnostics diverged widely from the scripture as a whole. Could it be that
they, in their portion of separation, were eventually reversed and, in a
different manner, twisted in disarray?)

When we move forward and consider the
witness of the stars where no man’s hand can make alterations, the feminine
gender of the Holy Spirit becomes more likely. Moses, in writing the book of
Genesis, proclaims that the luminous celestial bodies in the darkness of
night’s heaven and the sun’s brilliant light are for signs. Signs are symbols
that point to something beyond themselves. Half of the major constellations
are named with Semitic words that are feminine. In fact, within and in
proximity to many of these major constellations are signs that point to a
male-female interrelation. Joseph Seiss’ book The Gospel of the Stars,
states that the two figures in Gemini, according to the most ancient Zodiac
of Dendra, are not identical twins but those of a man and woman walking hand
in hand. He goes on to say, that the word Gemini in the original
Hebrew, Arabic and Syriac does not carry so much the idea of two brought
forth at the same birth as it does the idea of a long betrothal brought to
its consummation in perfect marriage. The old Coptic name of this sign
signifies “the completely joined.” The constellation of Virgo, which
represents the woman about to bring forth, has above it in the sky the
constellation Bootes that is named with a masculine noun. As recorded by Luke, Jesus, himself, encouraged the observation of the celestial sphere for portents of truth.(Luke 17:20-24)

Why could it be then that the second
century theologians and translators were blinded to the importance of the
femininity of the Holy Spirit? The power of Rome, in which Western culture is
deeply rooted, was built on the three disciplines of virtus, pietas,
and fides.Virtus conveys the idea of an individual’s
harmonious integration. According to Pierre Grimal, a professor of Latin
literature at the Sorbonne, this harmonious integration may not be what we
first think. He writes, “When a Roman spoke of virtus he was less
likely to mean conformity to abstract values than spontaneous assertion by
action of the essential virile qualities of self mastery – granting to the
feminine weakness, with a certain contempt, the characteristic of impotentia
sui, an inability to control its nature.” In the second century, in the
West, the educated Roman male who was trained in this discipline of male
self-mastery became the bishop or the theologian. Because of the prestige and
power of Rome these exerted pressure on the Eastern churches to conform to
their doctrines. In the third century the Roman bishop actually
excommunicated all the Eastern churches that would not change the date of
Easter from the Hebrew calendar’s date that corresponded to a day determined
by each year’s particular lunar cycles to a consistently prescribed Sunday
based on the Julian calendar. In time even the power and influence of the
Roman Emperor began to be used by the West to settle doctrinal disputes with
the Eastern churches.

In the East the esteem of women was quite
different from that rendered by this Roman discipline of virtus. The
Hindu culture, which was built upon Eastern thought, yet was spared Roman
influence, today retains many original ingredients of the East. Bishop K.C.
Pallia, a converted Hindu, when teaching from Solomon’s proverbs about the
instruction of the father and the law of the mother writes, “The young children
have been taught that the mother comes first, the father second, the teacher
third and God fourth. So in India, if you don’t love and obey your mother,
father, and teacher, there is a saying God will not sing.”

In the Greek, there is a feminine letter eta
that gives light on feminine divinity. It is used in combination with the
Greek word men in one verse of the Biblical texts. These two words are
used in the accepted Greek text in Hebrews chapter six, verse fourteen and
are translated as surely as they are in secular Greek literature. In
Greek these two words are combined as an idiomatic expression that if
translated literally would be meaningless in English and most other current
languages. The first word, eta, is most times rendered as the dative
pronoun, she. The second Greek word, men, has at its root a
relation to the moon. During the Bronze Age men was the name of an
Anatolian moon goddess. At other places, where it is used without the eta,
it is translated month, which in ancient eastern culture corresponded
to the lunar cycle. When this verse is read literally, it could read that she-lunar
was the one who blessed Abraham. From this we can say that feminine divinity
blessed Abraham.

If the Holy Spirit is feminine, which is
most probable, then, it had a presence in the Old Testament. Stephen, a
follower of Peter, told the religious leaders of Israel that they and their
fathers had always resisted the Holy Ghost. What then would be the name of
feminine divinity in the Old Testament? From this verse in Hebrews, it would
reasonably have a relation to Abraham. When God came to Moses with his charge
to lead these fathers from bondage, he said that he had formerly been know to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by the name of El Shaddai. (Exodus 6:3) Shaddai,
in the Aramaic, is in the feminine gender. In the Hebrew it has closely
associated words that have feminine meanings. In both the Hebrew and Aramaic,
it means full breasted. Reasonably, in all this, although
intentionally closeted away from the mind’s understanding in the second
century, feminine divinity has had an ongoing principle role in the affairs
of men.

What it being dealt with is the Gnostic
belief that the Holy Spirit is the feminine spouse of God the Father, the
witness of an early Syrian Hebrew manuscript that the Holy Spirit is feminine
and, as such, is the mother in law of the soul and marginalized etas.
(In this context it is also revealing that the Greek word for soul is
rendered in the feminine gender.) We also have the testimony of John 14:26 in
a copy of the Old Syriac. We are now looking beyond the minute detail of the
texts to the light of the scope of scripture to see if these supposed
heretical beliefs have additional substantiation and an application to
further faith.

The nineteenth century British Biblical
scholar, E.W. Bullinger, in his book, A Great Cloud of Witnesses has
said that the Greek word in Hebrews chapter eleven for the heavenly country
that Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Jacob sought is used
six times in scripture. He says in all of the five other places “it is
rendered his own country, referring to the earthly parental home of
Mary and Joseph.” These patriarchs sought a homeland with both spiritual
mother and spiritual father without fulfillment. They looked for what Paul
found when the mystery was revealed to him.

Paul also uses this word, country,
though from its feminine root when he speaks of the whole family in
heaven and on earth in Ephesians chapter three verse fifteen. Natural
observation and the definition of words require that we define a family as
mother and father with their progeny. There is a section of Pauline scripture
that adds much light when considered in its entirety. It is Romans chapter
one. Romans and both Corinthian letters were written at a time when Paul was
taking the churches onward to a more mature level of understanding of the family
of God, as later revealed in Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians. This was
the time for him to bring the church through the transition from those things
seen on this earth to those things unseen in heaven. He understood that the
original natural order of things was a pattern for those things unseen in the
heavenlies and that the interrelationship of God’s creation on earth was a
schoolhouse for learning the heavenly plan of salvation. In Romans chapter
one verse twenty he says according to the King James Version:

For the invisible things of him from the creation of
the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,
even his eternal power and Godhead;

The book of Genesis is the fundamental Biblical
record of those things that are made from the creation of the world. Paul
writes that the unseen can be seen by the things that are made. In Genesis,
the book of things made, we see divinity’s desire to make man in their image.

And God said, Let us make man in our own image after our likeness….
Gen1:26

The Hebrew word for God in this
verse is elohiym. It is in the plural so the pronouns us, and our
are properly supplied. Any thing more than one is plural. In the next verse
the Hebrew word for God is also elohiym. In this next verse, the pronoun
translated as his is also plural and should be translated their.
The image of their own, in which elohiym created man, was male
and female. These Gods or elohiym were and are two; male and female-
the Father and the Holy Spirit. They made mankind in the likeness of
themselves.

In Genesis, before man is formed out of
the dust of the ground and is given the breath of life to become a living
soul, he is created first as male and female in the image of God. It is only
after man is formed out of the ground and after being made a unified living
soul that man is separated into two distinct parts to fulfill God’s desire
for a new family through procreation. The later context of Romans chapter one
deals ultimately with the behavior of the two seen parts. It contains Paul’s
strong admonition against homosexual and lesbian behavior. Paul’s concern
about this behavior was not based on a desire to reveal the
self-incriminating judgment just upon those who engaged in the practice but
was based on a desire to bring all men up to understand the mystery that had
been hidden in God from before the foundations of this world. Here, in Romans
chapter one, Paul uses this obvious example of human corruption for a warning
to all humankind. All have endeavored, in some form or fashion, outside of
faith, in sincere ways, to intemperately and impatiently attain the divine
through preconditioned self-satisfying means.

In all of Paul’s writings there are, it
seems, only two things about which he was most concerned in the church – faithfulness
in the marriage relationship and faithfulness to his gospel. He knew that the
one flesh of the marriage relationship was a shadow of things unseen in the
realm of the soul and the realm of the Spirit. In Ephesians when he speaks
about the one flesh relationship between husband and wife he concludes by
saying, “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the
church.” Without a respect for the power brought forth by the union of male
and female and an appreciation for the corresponding sanctity of the sexual
relationship of husband and wife in this earthly realm, Paul knew that one
would limit one’s self from having one’s eyes opened to understand the
mystery of Godliness emanating from the heavenly realm. He was dedicated to
the revelation given him from Jesus Christ and his commission to first bring
forth the fulfillment of salvation’s plan attained through the knowledge of
the masculine wed with the wisdom of the feminine to bring forth the union in
Christ.

Now we speak more specifically to the Holy
Spirit being the mother in law of the soul according to the Hebrew Syrians in
light of the scope of scripture and from the light that the Greek word for soul
is also in the feminine gender. They, being from a Jewish background, had
always believed that they collectively as a bride would become married to the
Messiah at which time all their sin would be forever cleansed. As ones
betrothed to be married to the Messiah they knew from the scripture and their
culture that they were the property of their mother in law to be prepared for
entrance into a new family upon the culmination of the marriage ceremony. In
Genesis, the book of things made, when Abraham’s oldest servant brought
Rebecca, the betrothed of Isaac, back from his far off relatives she first
went to dwell in Sarah’s tent until the actual wedding feast. Ruth stayed
with her mother in law Naomi even after her husband and the husband of Naomi
died rather than return to her original family for support. She knew when she
entered her husband’s family that in the event of his death that she would
revert to being the property of her mother in law until she married another
son or male blood line relative within the family or even waited for her
mother in law to bear another son as a future husband for her. From the Old
Testament record of things that were made and from their Hebrew gospel they
could see that the Holy Spirit was the mother of the one to whom they were
betrothed and as such the mother in law of their souls. Still there was a completing
portion of truth that was later revealed to Paul that they did not yet know.

The gospel of Matthew, which, as some
scholars say, was taken from the earlier gospel of the Hebrews, attributes
the conception of Jesus singularly to the Holy Ghost. Luke, who wrote later
and who had spent considerable time with Paul, writes of the birth of Jesus
Christ as a result of the combination of two distinct entities when he says
of the angel’s words to Mary concerning the coming conception of Jesus, “the
Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall
overshadow thee.” It was this encompassing knowledge of the Highest, or
Father, that the twelve apostles and their followers were not given to know
during the early church. Philip, near the end of his time spent with Jesus,
was still asking Jesus to reveal the Father unto them. It is in Paul’s later
transitional epistle of Romans that the term Abba Father was first
given as a term to be used by those who had separated themselves from this
world’s methods and had entered the spirit of sonship. The Aramaic word abba
lends itself to the meaning of “the way unto the hidden source.”

So far we have seen that the original
belief of the early church was that the Holy Spirit was feminine according
Gnostic writings and an early Hebrew gospel. We have seen the substantial
declaration from Paul that the things unseen of the power of the eternal
Godhead are clearly understood by the things that are seen, referring
primarily to things made in Genesis and written within the context of
male-female sexual relations. Now let’s touch on several practical
ramifications for growing faith.

According
to Jewish culture the mother had sole responsibility and authority for the
care of the children in the family until they were five years old and then
primary responsibility until a daughter married into a new family or a son
passed the age of thirteen. Recently in a national news magazine it was
written, as if it were a new discovery, that around five years old children
matured to understand their independence and uniqueness as either male or
female. It was at this time that the children began their formal education
within the local synagogue or through accomplished household servants to be
presented for maturation upon completion by the hand of both mother and
father. Child psychologists also understand that the most formative years for
a child’s character are those in the earliest years following birth and that
the mother of a child has the strongest influence on the development of the
child during this time. Sociologists have rightly said that the future
character of a society rests in the hearts of mothers. Researchers at
Princeton University have found that moral decisions are made predominately
within the emotional or feminine center of the brain. (On the other hand,
although wives whose husbands perpetually lose car keys may not agree, men,
or masculine portions of the brain, are much more adept in the abstract
ability of spatial orientation and logic.) Yes, as Jesus said, the kingdom of
God is among you.

Why then
have we so easily succumbed to the pressure to disassociate children from the
nurturing care and instruction of their mothers? In the middle of the
twentieth century breast-feeding was discouraged among mothers. Now financial
burdens, competitive pressures to achieve, and some issues of gender equality
have sent mothers of young children into the work place. It is not surprising
that in a recent survey a large majority of working mothers said that they
would rather be at home with their young children. Have we allowed the
separation of and the ambiguities in members of a family because the true
nature and function of the Godhead has been hidden since the first century?
Could all this be another divisive corruption of the family on this earth
subtly designed to obscure the family in heaven?

In the late nineteen sixties gender
equality came to the forefront of social issues. Understandably and
reasonably so, since the model for marriage was based on the hierarchical
relationship of male domination which was imposed upon mankind through the
knowledge of good and evil. In its essence this knowledge demands a
hierarchical structure among humankind in all things. In it, self becomes the
center from which all things are judged and in the final analysis it demands
that one be better than another or one be less than another. After the
entrance of good and evil Adam judged himself better than Eve because he did
not take the first bite and less than God because he saw himself now as naked
flesh. There is a natural organic model for marriage and the family that is based upon
what was before the acceptance of this reasoning process that contrasts all
on the linear scale between good at one terminal and evil at the opposite.
The model commences before the beginning when there were two harmonized in
one and then out of one and then back into one through reunion within and
among progeny.

This concept of the feminine gender of the
Holy Spirit is not new or original. The early church had this belief and
within the last several decades it has been considered at large with
acceptance by individuals of faith in all areas. It may be that this writing
is a unique synergism in understandings and that there are some new
considerations within what is written here to add to the accumulating
evidence. Whatever the case may be there is much more that is written and to
be written that patterns the feminine gender of the Holy Spirit through the
breadth of scripture. There is much more to be understood about the male-female
harmony in the entire realm of those things seen. There is much more to be
understood about how the figurative husbands and wives of Ephesians bring forth the
brilliance of Paul’s revelation of the mystery and there is much more to be
understood about the wholeness that this belief will bring to an individual
and a community.(Eph 4:19-33)

For now
I close with these thoughts. When one becomes persuaded of the union of the
feminine and masculine, Paul’s revelation opens dramatically as the
consummate epic work of the eternal union that brings together sons and
daughters as the one new man in Christ of Ephesians. Scriptures can
now open to a new light through Paul’s revelation of consummation within the
cross of Christ and through its implantation into the very core of man’s
being to bring forth that one new man to dwell in the eternal light of
the coming new heaven and earth. Accordingly, I offer this presentation so
that the revelatory script of the knowing playwright and the intuitions of
the wise director may be more fully understood and, in the end, be joined
harmoniously together within our souls and within our family to bring to pass
the eternal plan of salvation for all humankind through the cross of Christ.